A Reuters/Ipsos daily-tracking poll released Saturday also gave Obama a 4-point lead. Obama leads Romney 47 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. On Friday, Obama overtook Romney in the same poll and held a 46 to 44 percent edge.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows President Obama attracting support from 49% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns 45% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided…

This is the president’s biggest lead over Romney among Likely Voters since March 17. See daily tracking history. Obama’s convention bounce is evident both in the head-to-head numbers with Romney and in his Job Approval ratings…

A president’s job approval rating is one of the best indicators for assessing his chances of reelection. Typically, the president’s job approval rating on Election Day will be close to the share of the vote he receives. Currently, 52% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s job performance. That’s his highest approval rating in more than a year-and-a-half, since January 2011.

The Romney campaign, while pleasantly surprised by Obama’s lackluster prime-time performance, said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers — most glaringly in Ohio — are working in the president’s favor.

“Their map has many more routes to victory,” said a top Republican official. Two officials intimately involved in the GOP campaign said Ohio leans clearly in Obama’s favor now, with a high single-digit edge, based on their internal tracking numbers of conservative groups. Romney can still win the presidency if he loses Ohio, but it’s extremely difficult…

Obama officials have maintained for several weeks that there are too few undecided voters for Romney to get the bounce he needs from the debates. “Romney is not going to win undecided voters four-to-one,” a senior administration official told reporters on Air Force One on Friday. “If you are losing in Ohio by four or five points and trailing in Colorado by two points, if you are trailing in Nevada by two or three points, you are not going to win in those states.

***

Once upon a time, the Romney campaign dreamed of putting New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon in play. Now, just a few months later, they are on the precipice of giving up on Michigan and Pennsylvania, and they are still behind in Ohio.

“We’re very comfortable with the reality of what this race is about, and we’re not in the momentum business,” said Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist. “We’re in the talking-to-voters-about-their-lives business.”…

The 1980 analogy holds for Romney the potential for a breakthrough during or after the debates. In that campaign, Ronald Reagan trailed President Jimmy Carter into the month of October. He moved ahead after the candidates’ only head-to-head debate. Romney advisers have said for months that the longer they stay roughly even with the president, the better their chances of winning in November.

Obama advisers, however, see that as a flawed analogy. The electorate was less polarized then than now, with more opportunity for each candidate to attract a larger number of undecided voters than exists today. They also note that Reagan’s image was more positive than Romney’s has been. “There are so many ways that’s not plausible,” Axelrod said of the 1980 analogy, “starting with Obama’s not Carter and Romney’s not Reagan.”

***

Thursday night in Charlotte, Barack Obama doubled down on his liberalism, articulating the case for big government, greater regulation, and more spending (which he calls “investing”). He defined a choice that is starkly ideological, courageously embracing the left. We have not seen such positioning since the days of Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale. And with good reason: the American people are conservative…

While eloquent as he accepted his party’s nomination, Obama failed to go after Mitt Romney in his speech and throughout the whole Democratic convention. “The folks in Tampa,” “the Republican establishment” and “the conservative Congress” all came in for a thrashing. Mitt Romney was not on the list in both Clinton and Obama’s speeches. In fact, his name was hardly mentioned — an odd occurrence in view of the over $100 million Obama has spent on ads attacking Romney…

Wisconsin is a big target. It has been the whole damn time. All the groaning and eeyoring by folks over it’s absence in the first release was weak-kneed silliness, as much as the fretting over “120% turnout in Madison” was for the recall. Team Romney is going to attack a vastly larger map than what McCain was desperately trying to win avoid embarrassment and hold in 08. Enjoy that bounce from the convention while you can, President Obama. The ads and GOTV rollout begins now, and no amount of scale-thumbing by Purely Partisan Polling will be able to deflect a 9-figure onslaught.

On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come…

Maybe this anxiety is misplaced. President Obama has never been able to rise above 47% support in the polls, and perhaps when November comes undecided voters will break against the incumbent, as the conventional wisdom has it. Maybe the election won’t be so close after all. We’d all better hope so. Because, given the rate at which Democrats are frantically adding to the dependency state, another four years of Obama may be enough to tip the balance between the private sector and government dependence once and for all.

***

[O]nce you accept a wealth-redistribution system in which government becomes the arbiter of “social justice,” the ball game is over. If government is given license to even the scales between the have-nots and the haves, the political incentive to even them will be constant and overpowering: Enough will never be enough. If the rationale for giving government this power is that the asset in question is corporate property, not private, what is to be the limiting principle? Why health care but not housing or income? And when it comes to providing for the truly needy among 310 million people, central-government planners will simply never be as good at it as decent societies and their local governments. And so the allocation of burdens and benefits in federal entitlement programs is guaranteed to be warped, wasteful, and ultimately unsustainable.

Yet, no political party is making that case. Both candidates want you to know they are sentries of the safety net. And no major conservative journal or think tank, it seems, would have it any other way. Concededly, the GOP’s approach, “Let’s work within this implausible system and do the best we can to patch it up . . . someday,” is a more attractive position than Obama’s “Let’s break the bank now.” But inspiring? . . . Not exactly…

Obama’s base, that lost third of the country, may not be as enthralled as they were in 2008. But they are committed, utterly convinced about who the villains are, and prepared to be as chameleon as it takes to reel in, from the culture they dominate, the additional 15 percent or so needed to push their guy across the finish line. That’s how what should be a landslide for his opponent becomes a squeaker.

***

Only the Romney campaign can cut through the cultural, educational, and media filters and force a debate over the Obama Democrats’ bogus redefinition of the American dream. The media can ignore what conservatives say, but they still have to cover the candidate. With the exception of his welfare ads, however, the Romney campaign has avoided an assault on Obama’s ideology. Romney’s entirely plausible strategy is to downplay the ideological battle (Ryan nomination notwithstanding)…

I can’t say for certain that Romney’s strategy is wrong. But I do think it’s far riskier than we realize. Treating Obama as a nice guy in over his head, rather than a smart leftist who knows exactly what he’s doing, leaves the Democrats’ bogus narrative about government unanswered. America is changing, and Republicans are naive to rely on the public to simply recognize the problems in the Democrats’ claims without significant help from our nominee…

I don’t have access to the Romney campaign’s focus-group and survey data. Maybe they’re right to try to pry away those erstwhile Obama supporters in only the gentlest of ways. Yet I worry that the Romneyites are fooling themselves. Technocrats and fixers from a state where liberals dominate, they are neither inclined or prepared to show how the Obama Democrats are slowly redefining American exceptionalism into the European social democratic dream. Romney may squeak by on bad unemployment numbers and gentle coaxing of undecideds, but patriotic veneer the Democrats have managed to slap on their leftism is worrisome. If Obama wins, it will be because we allowed him to get away with it.

Blowback

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If Obama is reelected he will be inheriting a Big Mess from … … … … himself. But don’t worry, he will then proceed to make the mess he inherited from himself look small by comparison and we will look back at his first term as “The Good Old Days”.

Forget all about everything you see, hear and feel. Julia Clark is in control of your mind. Look deeply into her eyes. You are getting sleepy, very sleepy. Everything is wonderful. No one is unemployed. Gas cost only 99 cents a gallon. Sex change operations will soon be free. Not even a co-payment. College tuition will be free. The oceans will recede. The planet will heal.

The Romney campaign, while pleasantly surprised by Obama’s lackluster prime-time performance, said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers — most glaringly in Ohio — are working in the president’s favor.

“Their map has many more routes to victory,” said a top Republican official. Two officials intimately involved in the GOP campaign said Ohio leans clearly in Obama’s favor now, with a high single-digit edge, based on their internal tracking numbers of conservative groups.

Romney can still win the presidency if he loses Ohio, but it’s extremely difficult…

Can we say with certainty that the Ryan pick did nothing to change the feelings of the general public towards Romney?

Can we also now say that the TEATERS have the upper hand?

Missing from the article above is what the crap the Romney people plan on doing about this?

Obviously people just don’t care that Obama is labeled a Marxist or Socialist. They like that he’s the laid-back cool cat and they love his smile and his wife’s arms.

.cue the Eeyores, concern trolls, True Cons, and other denizens of this wretched hive of scum and villainy. Prediction: Tonight’s QOTD will be like the bar scene in Star Wars.

“..this little one’s not worth the effort; come, let me get you something.”

The War Planner on September 9, 2012 at 9:11 PM

Take a good lok at what’s wrong with the GOP, folks. “Scum and villainy”? Oh my. The little one is throwing a temper tantrum because Mr Electability, The Only One Who Can Beat Obama ™ might not be all that after all? Please. If there’s any “scum and villainy”, it’s among those who’ve been shoving this squish down our throats for the past 4 years.

Because Romney has the personality of a sack of wet money and simply comes from a different planet (planet Rich) that most Americans can’t identify with (except as some fantasy island TV diversion). Obama, for all his faults, is seen as a regular person who’s lived a normal life. The Romneys are too out of touch.

It’s pretty simple. The Republican Party has move so far to the right, and become so addicted to decades-old plutocratic nostrums, that even in the midst of economic hard times, voter recognize the GOP for the frauds they are.

Currently, 52% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s job performance. That’s his highest approval rating in more than a year-and-a-half, since January 2011.

What?

I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money.

O no.

Maybe this anxiety is misplaced. President Obama has never been able to rise above 47% support in the polls, and perhaps when November comes undecided voters will break against the incumbent, as the conventional wisdom has it. Maybe the election won’t be so close after all. We’d all better hope so. Because, given the rate at which Democrats are frantically adding to the dependency state, another four years of Obama may be enough to tip the balance between the private sector and government dependence once and for all.

Need chocolate. Need chocolate like a fat man sobbing through a photo album. Or an excuse to open the “celebration” Port. Or literally any other thing than this uncertain place.

Talking about Romney already having lost – what, a week after the nomination? Really? – only makes the libertarians say, “Oh, I won’t soil myself with voting for him, then. I’ll vote for Gary Johnson.” It makes the social conservatives say, “I’ll stay home and pray for the country.” It makes the doom and gloom crowd say, “I won’t vote. I’ll buy ammo and be ready to fight the civil war.”

Yeah, praying and arming yourselves won’t ever hurt (talk of civil war might), but deciding not to vote on the basis of skewed polls and smarmy Journolist spin is just stupid. And amplifying and giving credence to the MSM spin when you KNOW the polls are beyond flawed and that the Justice Department has its jackboots into the pollsters is criminal. Yes, criminal. It’s spreading fear and despondency.

Do you feel scared at times? Do you wonder if we’ve gone too far? Do you wonder if we can’t win? Everyone does. Do you not want to delude yourselves? No one does.

But we already have a disadvantage in not having a dedicated media. MUST you amplify the media? What is the point of fear and despondency but to make our side give up?

The signs are against the polls. The very success of the 2016 documentary is against the polls. The registration momentum is against the polls.

Is America going to go back after Obama because he gave a speech? Oh, for heaven’s sake, even the MSM admitted it wasn’t a good speech. That’s why they played on Clinton extensively.

The Romney campaign is not conservative. It is just as cynical and risk-averse as Team Obama. A real conservative would be winning now.
====================================================================

This feels like after the financial crisis hit in 08 and the polls swung and put Obama in the lead and that was that. No ads or debates could change the outcome. All the momentum is on Obama’s side now despite the poor economy. And it doesn’t help to have Romney stick his finger in the eye of Conservatives by praising Clinton and parts of Obamacare.

I’d be very disappointed to find out that Team Romney is taking advice from Joe Scarborough.

I can’t say with certainty that Romney will win but I’ve seen enough from their campaign to know they are not handing the election to the rat-eared bastard. Some examples:

Upon becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, Romney held an event outside the shuttered Solyndra facility.

Romney made Obama cancel a day of campaigning to go to Louisiana and look at flooded out people in a state that he will lose in November.

Ann Romney did not get sucked into expressing her own views about social issues.

In short, I think there is merit in not going full tilt against the rat-eared bastard now. It is far better to make the contrast during the debates where Obama has to defend his pathetic record on the same stage as the “corporate vulture.”

Because Romney has the personality of a sack of wet money and simply comes from a different planet (planet Rich) that most Americans can’t identify with (except as some fantasy island TV diversion). Obama, for all his faults, is seen as a regular person who’s lived a normal life. The Romneys are too out of touch.

Romney = Kerry. Maybe not in policy, but definitely in style and unfortunately image takes precedence over policy with the low-info voters who will ultimately decide this thing.

The only thing that will save Romney’s bacon is to make absolutely clear that his will be the last election in which those paying in to the system will be able to out vote those living off the system and let the racism accusations that will necessarily follow such an argument fall where they may.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows President Obama attracting support from 49% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns 45% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided…

Last week, Ras was the Gold Standard. Now let’s see how many ‘bots throw him under the bus.

“The bump is actually happening,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark. “How big it’ll be and how long it will last remains to be seen,” she added.

I’d give it a couple of more days. People have a short attention span about these things. The everyday reality of Obama’s policy failures will rapidly erase any temporary emotional bump from an empty speech.

It’s pretty simple. The Republican Party has move so far to the right, and become so addicted to decades-old plutocratic nostrums, that even in the midst of economic hard times, voter recognize the GOP for the frauds they are.

urban elitist on September 9, 2012 at 9:16 PM

If the GOP is losing, it isn’t losing because it’s too conservative. I can’t believe you are trying to make that case with Mitt Romney as the nominee, and buckets of conservatives moaning here about that fact on a daily basis.

If the GOP is losing, it isn’t losing because it’s too conservative. I can’t believe you are trying to make that case with Mitt Romney as the nominee, and buckets of conservatives moaning here about that fact on a daily basis.

It’s pretty simple. The Republican Party has move so far to the right, and become so addicted to decades-old plutocratic nostrums, that even in the midst of economic hard times, voter recognize the GOP for the frauds they are.

urban elitist on September 9, 2012 at 9:16 PM

Yeah, right. It’s the opposite. The GOP has been in such a mad dash for that fuzzy middle, they’ve become indistinguishable from the Democrats. Dem vs Dem Lite, Dem will win every time.

Obama, for all his faults, is seen as a regular person who’s lived a normal life. The Romneys are too out of touch.

lostmotherland on September 9, 2012 at 9:16 PM

the Obama’s? lmfao alinsky fail. neither of them have produced one thing of value in this world. they are prototypical affirmative action soft bigotry of low expectation progressives promoted way past their aptitudes. they’d be better off in the south side of Chicago avoiding the gang violence hustling on the street.

Recently I’ve been reading the anti-Obama blogsphere, and yesterday it finally got to me.

I have only one question to ask – are you insane?

No, let me add a few other questions: Have you gone completely out of your minds? Do you want to lose? And do you understand fully what a loss would mean?

I hate to say it but I think the answers are yes, yes, yes and no.

I don’t like yelling at people on the right. Like Reagan, I hold on to the idea that there are no enemies on the right. I prefer to make my points in nicer ways. However, there comes a time any good housewife reaches for the broom. It is now time for the broom.

And another one of the intellectual lights of the Mittler Youth checks in. You people are going to have to be committed on the evening of November 6. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

ddrintn on September 9, 2012 at 9:25 PM

You want Obama to win because the only thing you care about is seeing Mitt Romney lose..that will not change the fact that your preferred candidate did not run…so what you are warning me about? Maybe Sarah should have run, maybe she should have spent less time on book tours and reality TV and more time on actually putting it on the line and running for the nomination.

Yeah, right. It’s the opposite. The GOP has been in such a mad dash for that fuzzy middle, they’ve become indistinguishable from the Democrats. Dem vs Dem Lite, Dem will win every time.

ddrintn on September 9, 2012 at 9:22 PM

I’m trying to identify the part where they rushed the middle. I’m thinking that, the third time around, people aren’t buying the old “cutting rich people’s taxes will make your life better” sales pitch. Particularly when you’re trying to make the deficit an issue. People aren’t actually as stupid as Romney hopes.

If he got Mitch McConell and John Boehner to stand up with him and annouce thatm, within 90 days of his inauguration, he’d sign something similar to Simpson-Bowles plan, he’d win in a landslide. But he’s a prisoner of his own base.

You want Obama to win because the only thing you care about is seeing Mitt Romney lose..that will not change the fact that your preferred candidate did not run…so what you are warning me about? Maybe Sarah should have run, maybe she should have spent less time on book tours and reality TV and more time on actually putting it on the line and running for the nomination.

Terrye on September 9, 2012 at 9:29 PM

There’s more money to be made in TV and books. That’s why she didn’t run.

Maybe the election won’t be so close after all. We’d all better hope so. Because, given the rate at which Democrats are frantically adding to the dependency state, another four years of Obama may be enough to tip the balance between the private sector and government dependence once and for all.

Uh, no. Four more years of Obama and there won’t be any dependency because there won’t be any money left. Unless every working American(the ones that are left anyway) is prepared to pay a much higher tax rate in order to keep the gravy train rolling for a few more years, the whole economy will come crashing down. Then we’ll all see why gun sales have been spiking lately. It ain’t an infringement on the 2nd Amendment that has people worried. It’s that when people who are dependent on government checks suddenly stop receiving them in the mail, they’re gonna get angry and violent.

And another one of the intellectual lights of the Mittler Youth checks in. You people are going to have to be committed on the evening of November 6. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

ddrintn on September 9, 2012 at 9:25 PM

We are going to win on November 6 2012… And even if we lose, the chances are small that this would happen, we will go on with our lives. We conservative are hard working producers… The people who would be hurt most if Obama wins, he is not going to win, are his supporters who the lazy and parasites of our society… Just check who is hurting most under Obama now and it is mostly his voters…

There’s more money to be made in TV and books. That’s why she didn’t run.

wargamer6 on September 9, 2012 at 9:30 PM

That might be true…but she was not the only one..for all the finger pointing at Mitt Romney from TruCons and other people looking for someone to blame in case of an Obama victory, it is worth noting that the choices were pretty damn slim. Several high profile conservatives could not be bothered to take the chance Mitt Romney has taken.

This is all unbelievable. BO gives a lousy speech and the masses are energized and up go his polls? Please. Gallup already has him down 4 points now. This is nuts. And for anyone to say Romney’s gonna lose means there are a bunch of spineless R’s and wishful D’s.

LOL! Polls are notoriously unreliable at this point in the campaign. They tend to become more stable and reliable the closer one gets to election day starting about 6 weeks out.

Even then, it depends on the spread, who they ask, and how they ask the question.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to polls.

thatsafactjack on September 9, 2012 at 9:30 PM

Oh, give me a break. Every time a Ras poll is highlighted showing Romney in the lead, the ‘bot squad shows up doing the funky chicken dance. Romney in the lead: reliable. Romney trailing: meaningless. The delusion at this site is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Romney is the nominee. That’s reality. IF you wish to see Obama out of office, Romney is the candidate to back.

If you’re one of those people who insists that you’re a conservative, and you’re still attacking conservatives over supporting the nominee, despite the fact that the primary is over… look around at who is standing there agreeing with you and attacking conservatives with glee.

You recognize them. The Obamaists.

That’s the company you’re keeping, the people you’re enabling, and the side your helping.

We are going to win on November 6 2012… And even if we lose, the chances are small that this would happen, we will go on with our lives. We conservative are hard working producers… The people who would be hurt most if Obama wins, he is not going to win, are his supporters who the lazy and parasites of our society… Just check who is hurting most under Obama now and it is mostly his voters…

mnjg on September 9, 2012 at 9:34 PM

A layer above lazy parasites exists, and people there are going to have a really hard time climbing up. Those are the ones I’m worried about. (We could call them the working poor or something — people for whom the safety nets are entangling and the rungs above their heads have either disappeared or been pulled up out of reach.)

Oh, so you’re just another Red Team camp follower then. Henry Waxman could put a n R after his name and snag the GOP nomination and you’d be pimping him as well.

At least he put his time and money on the line and ran. That is something your hero did not bother to do.

Terrye on September 9, 2012 at 9:31 PM

Time and money wasted, probably.

ddrintn on September 9, 2012 at 9:36 PM

If it is that damn easy why didn’t some of these people who like to go on TV and yak about what great conservatives they are give it a try?

Ron Paul made a career out of running for President….That is the thing about people like you…you are good at back stabbing and finger pointing but you can not deliver…you have no new ideas, candidates or suggestions..you just sit back and pray for disaster so that you can make other people feel bad. That is all you care about.

A month ago, by picking Ryan, I thought Romney had decided to show Obama for what he is: a smart, demogogic leftist who wants to reshape the country. That’s when he caught up. Now he’s plateauing again because rather than defending conservatism the campaign became “Obama’s in over his head.” No he’s not. He’s a leftist who’s doing exactly what he wants to do.

If that message doesn’t come out, the game is over. If Obama wins the goose is cooked and America, and conservatism, will be over until there’s a collapse from Big Government Liberalism like in Greece. I became worried when Ryan’s speech didn’t talk about the American idea, which is what he had been doing for the last two years.